I'm looking into buying a book on Game Engine Math/Physics and another on AI. What books would you guys recommend? The two that interest me the most are Mathematics for 3D Game Programing and Computer Graphics and Programming Game AI By Example. Any thoughts?

I'm a senior in high school who has taken AP Physics C (calculus based physics) and up through Calculus III (but no linear algebra), if you need that information for a recommendation.

Thank you in advance!


Edit: I probably shouldn't limit suggestions to those two topics - any recommendation for someone developing their own game engine would be awesome.

I'd recommend programming game ai by example(currently i'm reading, realy nice book)

I'm a senior in high school who has taken AP Physics C (calculus based physics) and up through Calculus III (but no linear algebra), if you need that information for a recommendation.

While this may not completely benefit you with game programming (since maths never gets taught from a game point of view, then again math doesnt get taught from any point of view) I recommend learning from "Larson Edward, Calculus" book, when I was at uni they foolishly told us to use "James Stewart, Calculus" and omg it was no surprise most of the class failed.

For game maths the above suggestion is overkill, "3D Math Primer For Graphics And Game Development" gets a lot of great reviews but I personally havent read it.

As for Physics, typically any advance applied physics will do and even then its overkill, as for AI, I havent been able to stay awake reading any AI related book, sometimes I think the AI related books are just trying to say "we are going to write an essay on a loop"; honestly some books drag on so much to the point where you start thinking "is AI as simple as 'if A happens do B?'".

Are James Stewart's books bad for some reason? I have fourth edition Single and Multivariable Calculus and I find them fairly decent, although I only have my school book to compare to which is terrible.

I personally never work with one book for any topic, I usually have this '3 book' rule (or in this case 2 since they are so expensive), the problem I found with James Stewart, Calculus was the examples / questions, they were retardedly complicated and were not explained well at all, as a result you would have an already confusing topic get even more confusing. Saying that, if you want to improve / advance your calculus knowledge "James Stewart, Calculus" isnt a bad way to go. Oh and there was a major area missing in the James Stewart book too, something I believe todo with parametric equations, either untouched or just not covered at all, I cant really remember.

Saying that, these days with the internet, Microsoft Maths and Wolfram Alpha, you can likely find the answer to any question and the process of finding that answer too

My Calc III class used Jame's Stewart's Early Transcendentals and did just fine, but to be fair we had a fantastic teacher and didn't often have to read the chapter.

Thanks for the input, guys.

I have both of those books. Have had the maths one for years and year and it's a great reference.

The AI book I bought recently and it's very good. As you'd expect from a book with "by example" in the title, there's lots of examples to help you get up and running. The coding style isn't quite to my taste but it's clear and works well. The tone of the book is quite informal too which is nice.